Clark Gable's Secret Daughter Dies at 76
Judy Lewis, the secret daughter of Hollywood legend Clark Gable, died at the age of 76 on Friday.
Lewis was an actress, as well as a writer and clinical psychotherapist for troubled teens, according to NPR News.
Although she lived much of her life in Los Angeles, she passed away from cancer at a retirement community in Gladwyne, Pa., reported the L.A. Times.
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For just over 50 years much of Lewis’ acting work consisted of several television roles including shows like General Hospital, according to IMDb.
The Washington Post reports that Lewis’ mother was also a Hollywood celebrity, Loretta Young, who had a brief affair with Gable after working together on the set of the 1935 film The Call of the Wild.
Loretta was single at the time while Gable was married to his second wife but due to the morals clause in Loretta’s contract with 20th Century Fox, she kept the pregnancy and birth a secret according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Considering the troubled background of Lewis’ own young life, psychotherapy for troubled teens may very well have been a suitable profession.
Lewis experienced a rather tumultuous upbringing growing up as a child. She described the struggles in her memoir Uncommon Knowledge.
“I had to write this book," she told The L.A. Times in 1994 when it was released. "I don't think anyone knows what it's like not to be acknowledged by your own parents."
Whenever Lewis saw the loving scenes between Gable’s character and his daughter in Gone with the Wind, she would cry.
“It’s so sad to me,” she told The London Telegraph in 2001. “Because he’s so dear with her, I pretend it’s me.”
